*[COLLECTIVE]. Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un. Paris : Ladvocat, 1831-1834- 15 volumes in-8, 215 x 132, half dark blue morocco, gilt fillets, spines richly decorated, marbled edges (period binding). First edition of one of the founding works of panoramic literature, gathering dozens of texts by known and unknown authors, which are all studies of manners on Paris. It is a work published above all to support the bookseller Ladvocat who was on the verge of bankruptcy. Men of letters of the time, as well as artists and scientists, gave one or several texts on Paris. Among the authors who participated were such great names as Jules Janin, Charles Nodier, Chateaubriand, Henry Monnier, Sainte-Beuve, Alexandre Dumas, Adolphe Thiers, Lamartine, Pétrus Borel, Sophie Gay, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Eugène Sue, Victor Hugo, Fenimor Cooper, etc. "The plan of this book is very simple. It is necessary to review modern Paris; it is necessary to show it as it is, uncertain, whimsical, angry, impatient, poor, bored, still eager for art and emotions, but difficult to move, absurd often, sometimes sublime; it is necessary to do for the Paris of today what Mercier did for the Paris of his time, with this difference that this time the pictures of manners will be rarely written in the limited way [...Here is a new book, if ever there was one; new by the matter, new by the form, new by the process of the composition which makes it a kind of encyclopedia of the contemporary ideas, the monument of a young and brilliant time, the album of an ingenious and powerful literature ". (excerpts from newspapers noted in the preface in volume 1, pp. VI and IX). The edition includes a woodcut title vignette after a drawing by Henry Monnier, a music plate in volume 11, a plate in volume 13 decorated with a vignette representing the castle of Buschtiérad occupied by Charles X, and, in the last volume, the folding facsimile of the act of literary association signed by all the authors who participated in the work. A very fine copy in contemporary binding, from the collection of one of the Seymour family members, of which one of the emblems is gilt on the spine. This may have been the great collector Richard Seymour Conway, Marquis of Hertford (1800-1870) or his son Richard Wallace (1818-1890). The copy later came into the possession of Diana Duff Cooper (1892-1986), Viscountess Norwich, wife of the British politician Alfred Duff Cooper (1890-1954), British ambassador to France from 1944 to 1947, and man of letters, author of a novel and a biography of Talleyrand. Some minor wear and tear, notably at the corners, slight lack at the top cover of volume 14. A few rare freckles. Provenance: Seymour family. - Diana Duff Cooper, with bookplate.